Tag: still life photographs

The Orphaned Spaces box set is one of those wonderful examples of how a very basic idea can grow into a full-blown all-consuming project.

Dated glass bottle reliquary

Our original idea for The Orphaned Spaces was to have a plain paper bag containing fragments of writing, the odd drawing and some landscape photography, all loosely themed around ‘waste ground’. About a month in to the project, however, it had already started to take on a life of its own. In the end, we spent a year gathering pictures and writing for it – and it still continues.

Postcards, fine art prints, seeds and reliquary

We’ve often described our Dunlin Press publications as ‘time capsules’, embodying the mood and spirit of a place or region at a particular period of human history – like pressing a pause button or taking a picture. The Orphaned Spaces box set is a physical manifestation of this concept.

The Orphaned Spaces: Hand-stitched journal

This highly limited edition, made-to-order box set, deconstructs the book The Orphaned Spaces, breaking it down into hand-stitched booklets, postcards, archival prints and a reliquary.

The Orphaned Spaces is an illustrated exploration of overlooked areas of natural beauty – edgelands, ex-industrial, derelict and brownfield sites, and the sometimes rare flora and fauna that is found there. More than a nature book, it is a rumination on life, loss and time, through the prism of liminal spaces captured in moments between dilapidation and regeneration.

Hand-stitched black and white botanical and insect studies booklet

The Orphaned Spaces book and box-set are released on 27 August 2018 but you can pre-order it now to get it on the day. If you’re a bookshop that wants to stock it, or any of our other titles, please get in touch with us email us at info (at) dunlinpress (dot) com.

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Our beautiful new book, published in August, is The Orphaned Spaces. The book is the latest in a loosely themed series from Dunlin Press that continues our interest in place, time and nature. It is available for pre-order now.

The book is a collaboration between Dunlin Press founders, poet MW Bewick and artist Ella Johnston. It is the culmination of a year of drawing, photographing and writing, making journeys across the UK, walking, gathering, and research.

In diary form, the text records a year in the life of liminal space and is all based on real journals – and conversations with naturalists – made over a 12-month period, summer to summer. The book includes quick brush pen sketches, made in the field, a series of intricately detailed black-and-white drawings, selected ‘waste ground’ landscape and still-life photographs of wild flowers, plus an image collection of pressed ‘relics’.

Relic, The Orphaned Spaces (c) Dunlin Press

The project is centred on a rumination on life through the prisms of derelict land, brownfield sites and edgelands, all caught between moments of dilapidation and regeneration.

Wild plant still life, taken from The Orphaned Spaces (c) Dunlin Press

These often overlooked spaces reveal much beauty: pioneer plants – ruderals – stray species from around the world, brought by boat and train, and rare native fauna and flora. There are profound lessons to be taken from these landscapes, as well as in the plant and insect life that inhabits them – they are orphaned spaces that can come to be loved.

Yarrow drawing by Ella Johnston, The Orphaned Spaces (c) Dunlin Press

The Orphaned Spaces is released on 27 August 2018 but you can pre-order it now to get it on the day. If you’re a bookshop that wants to stock it, or any of our other titles, please get in touch with us email us at info (at) dunlinpress (dot) com.

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Last week we previewed some black and white sketch imagery for our new project The Orphaned Spaces. Here’s a look at how we’ve put together some of our handmade books for the limited edition box set.

The first film features our book containing detailed black and white fine line studies of wild flowers, plants and insects. Inspired by botanical drawings seen in antiquarian books, the pieces are printed on archival paper.

The second video showcases our collection of still life photographs. These images are of plants that we gathered on our explorations of abandoned brownfield sites. Again, as with the black and white drawings, they are printed on archival paper for the handmade element of the project.

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Wild clover illustration by Ella Johnston featured in The Orphaned Spaces published by Dunlin Press

The Orphaned Spaces is the culmination of a multimedia collaboration between Dunlin Press founders Martin Bewick and Ella Johnston. The project is centred on a rumination on life through the prism of liminal spaces – derelict land, brownfield sites – caught between moments of dilapidation and regeneration. The project takes the form a paperback book and a highly limited edition box set, featuring hand-stitched booklets, postcards, archival prints and a reliquary.

Here’s a preview of some of the imagery used alongside the prose element of The Orphaned Spaces. These black and white illustrations were created in brush pen by Ella Johnston.

Wild flower illustrations by Ella Johnston featured in The Orphaned Spaces published by Dunlin PressThese sketches accompany more detailed fine-liner drawings, still lives and landscape photography elsewhere in the piece. The illustrations seen here are visceral, loose and gestural and have been made on the fly, in the moment.

Wild flower illustrations by Ella Johnston featured in The Orphaned Spaces published by Dunlin Press

We’ll be revealing more about The Orphaned Spaces on our instagram and here over the next couple of weeks so watch this space…

Wild flower illustrations by Ella Johnston featured in The Orphaned Spaces published by Dunlin Press